BAUER CERTAIN HE SUFFERED BRAIN DAMAGE DURING HIS PLAYING DAYS

Junior Seau and Hank Bauer were friends right up to the horrible, inconceivable finish.

“I’d say Junior had a small inner circle of very close friends,” Bauer said, “and I’d put myself in the second circle, which was much larger. I didn’t see anything coming and I’m not sure anyone in the inner circle saw anything coming, either.”

Seau and Bauer also had much in common. As beloved Chargers of different eras, they played hard, practiced hard and had great passion for the game. They recklessly threw their bodies around. The big difference now is that Bauer, analyst for Chargers radio broadcasts, is alive, and Seau took his own life in May.

Last week the National Institutes of Health announced it discovered Seau suffered from a debilitating brain disease that probably (no certainty) was caused by more than 20 years of playing football, and also could have led to dark moments and eventually suicide.

I immediately thought of Hank, who eventually left the game due to serious neck problems and can be a very intense individual. I asked him if the latest evidence regarding Junior’s death made him think about his own mental health.

“All the kickoffs and short-yardage runs … all dangerous,” he said. “Yes. I’ve asked myself that question and I’m concerned. This raises a red flag. Do I think I have brain damage? Absolutely. One hundred percent certain.”

Now I’ve known Bauer since I first covered the Chargers day-to-day in 1982. I knew him as a player, a Chargers special teams coach and then during his career as a broadcaster. He studies football. He works it. We’ve talked hundreds of times. He’s a well-known prankster, but a very smart man who has taken care of himself physically and financially. He’s even met a woman he plans to marry. Hank has grown.

I wouldn’t call him crazy. Let’s say he’s not completely right. Can you be one of the greatest special teams players in NFL history and make 52 special teams tackles in a season if you’re all there? And don’t forget, unlike Seau the superstar, Bauer, although extremely popular, had to fight from 1977-82, every one of his seasons here, to keep his job. Heck, I’m not all there and I’ve never tackled anyone. But that statement surprised me.

“I know I was concussed,” he said. “A number of times. But I was only taken out of one game, knocked out cold in the L.A. Coliseum. No idea where I was.

“I’m certain I have brain damage and logic says it happened from what I did. You just don’t know. I’m 58 now and I don’t know what’s normal for a 58-year-old. I forget things. Is that normal? The only way to find out is to get your brain examined. I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not normal.”

Bauer may be concerned about his head, but there are other parts of his body that have not escaped the wrath of the game. It’s hard to say you even have to play football as Bauer did, which was all-out mayhem, but he is not without other problems that directly can be linked to his playing days.

“I know this,” he said. “The rest of my body feels like crap, and I work out every day. I feel like I’ve been run over by 10 trains. Football just accelerated damage to my joints. Are all these things triggers?

“They say with brain damage there is a loss of memory. How much does that happen to a normal person? I can’t say it definitely, but I absolutely would find it hard to believe I don’t have brain damage. And then there are the other problems.”

The thing about Hank being Hank of course is that he’s willing to say what’s on his mind. He’s told me before he’s had some dark periods of his own and now says it’s difficult for him not to remain active. Does he miss football? I can think of few people who played who do not.

“I’m not going to lie,” Bauer said. “I loved that part of it. I loved playing. But what goes first, the mind or the body? You can’t argue with 52 special teams tackles in a season (such records aren’t kept, but if this isn’t one, it’s close). If you don’t have ability, you can’t do that. It was rare.

“As for Junior, I don’t know what triggers depression. I don’t want to hear it (as a cause for his suicide). Can anybody out there actually say that brain damage leads to depression? Who has the right for anyone to say that not living in the limelight?

“Junior was an impulsive guy. Nobody has the right to make that judgment. It bothers me for people to say it was 100-percent brain damage. It’s hard to quantify. And it’s really hard for somebody who hasn’t lived his life to say, when your body breaks down and you have business failures and marriage failures … can we absolutely say it’s from brain trauma? Writers are quick to judge. It’s not fair.”

It isn’t fair. We will never know.

“The league is making great strides, but at what price?” Bauer concluded. “It’s not going to happen overnight. It has to start at football’s lower levels. It’s going to be a process, and I think it’s going to happen.

“But can anybody really say this was about brain damage, or all of it? Other issues must be taken into account. I say it’s all of it.”